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Another Little Piece

Review

From a very young age, we are taught that there are times in life that a person simply has to grin and bear it. Reach a little further, try a little harder, accept another little setback. But as author Kate Kryus Quinn reminds us in her insistently gruesome first novel, sometimes ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE is too much to take.

"ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE could probably use a few more pieces to make the puzzle fit together."

Annaleise is a miracle girl who somehow stumbled back into the civilized world after a dramatic disappearance over a year earlier. But even though everyone who knows her claims that she’s the same girl, she’s positive that she is an imposter. It isn’t just the memory loss resulting from missing brain matter; Annaliese can’t shake the feeling that she’s someone else --- a girl named Anna. Suffering from nightmares, flashbacks of someone else’s memories and a number of threatening acquaintances, Annaliese tries to uncover who is really living in her skin. But the answer may turn out to be a little more than she bargained for.

As Annaliese slowly chips away at the mysteries surrounding her reappearance, she realizes that she may be the very monster she’s been running from. It seems that Anna has been involved with some very unsavory business --- selling souls, breaking hearts and some hard-core cannibalism. She’s been on the move for a long time, switching from body to body as each girl approaches her 18th birthday. But Annaliese is trying to right Anna’s wrongs. And while trying to determine exactly what she is responsible for (and to whom), Anna finds herself drawn to the old Annaliese’s family, friends and even Dex, the unusual boy next door.

ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE could probably use a few more pieces to make the puzzle fit together. Annaliese is never questioned by the police, despite the fact that she has been gone for a year and her case has never been tied up. Neither is it ever truly explained where she has been waiting, or why the transfer to Annaliese didn’t turn out like the others. Another loose end left dangling is why her feelings for Logan have evaporated, leaving a strong attraction to Dex, an essentially unknown loner, in their place. The ending is abrupt and Annaliese’s poetry is, well, bad, but to be fair that may just be Quinn’s way of keeping the story realistic. In any case, that’s really only a little piece of it.